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<\/p>\nThe Virtual Care pilot programs will have nurses on site; however, only one doctor will be responsible for four hospitals overnight, including in Lillooet and Clearwater. <\/p>\n
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\u201cThis healthcare crisis we\u2019re in \u2014 we\u2019re in for the long ride here. It\u2019s not going to be solved in a year. It\u2019s not going to be solved in two years. This is a five-, 10-, 15-year problem. Right now, this is a new bright idea to try to ease the pressure on the doctors and get some quality of life back for a whole bunch of people in the medical system,\u201d said Merlin Blackwell, Mayor of Clearwater Thursday (Oct. 23).<\/p>\n
Nicola Valley Hospital has recently had two emergency room closures due to staff illness. Merritt Mayor Mike Goetz believes more staff and beds are needed<\/p>\n
\u201cYou talk about a situation where something closes down because two people are not well, it\u2019s going to show you that there\u2019s not enough coverage even when everybody is well. We still need more nurses. Every community in BC knows this. Northern Health is worse than we are. We would like to see more nurses,\u201d said Goetz.<\/p>\n
Clearwater has had eight temporary closures this year and hopes this pilot will bring it down to zero and reduce pressure on staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat it\u2019s designed to do is to give our doctors a break. A lot of our doctors work up to 48-hour shifts and that is just wrecking their mental health, their health and burning them out. We need to stop doing that,\u201d said Blackwell.<\/p>\n
Goetz believes the health authority needs to provide more staffing to hospitals before reverting to virtual emergency care.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s another way of saying, \u2018Hey, we\u2019re covering your situation without actually fixing the problem.\u2019 We need warm bodies, not a TV set. No, I would not support it. I would not like to see it come to my community,\u201d said Goetz.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe still need staff. What we need is stable staff. I see a program like this, if it lasts a year or two, helps create that stability, stops the burnout,\u201d said Blackwell.<\/p>\n
Both mayors hope this is a temporary fix that leads to a long-term solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Virtual Care pilot programs will have nurses on site; however, only one doctor will be responsible for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-239809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}